Main Cult Classic Discussion

In the comic books section, a user has been removing examples out of obvious Fan Hater and Hatedom bias. This is not the appropriate place to vent frustration with an artist. Please use this website constructively, or not at all.

I think there's a clash of definition about Cult-classic. I mean, Looney Tunes? They're among the most well known cartoons and well praised cartoons ever made. Sure, they could be interpreted as "bizarre", but not necessarily alienating.

Mr.Fable

12:39:07 AM Aug 1st 2012

I agree. I mean, why are South Park and the Simpsons listed? How are they cult classics? Everyone has heard of South Park and the Simpsons.

oknazevad

08:16:17 PM Nov 6th 2013

Agree fully. A devoted fan base alone does not make a film cult classic; some of the films listed here were and are very much maintream hits, raking in millions at the box office and spawning big-budget sequels. Cult classics are ones that had only small if devoted notice originally and have picked up fans over time, not anything maintream, like most if Wes Craven's stuff listed here. The list needs a severe trimming.

How is Chrono Cross a Cult Clasic? Didn't it get straight 9 and 10s from all professional reviewers upon release? Also, it sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, which I'm pretty sure counts as commercially successful.

Does Bizarro Fiction count as the literary equivalent of the cult film, making the literary genre a genre of cult classics? Will that ever go on this list?

berr

09:43:28 PM Oct 6th 2011edited by berr

It's hard to discuss in the case of literature because many well-reviewed "literary" novels are read by so few people that you have to figure out what the benchmark is. But if you're familiar enough to suggest some examples...

My personal feeling would be to focus on individual works that have a persistent, dedicated following, rather than, say, all works by a given person (since that seems to imply inherent marketability). But I'm just thinking out loud.

The list of "cult classic" comics contains most of the most famous, best-selling graphic novels I can think of. Granted the medium as a whole is a bit cultish, but this approach renders the section useless.

berr

09:39:02 PM Oct 6th 2011edited by berr

Be Bold and remove anything that is considered a defining example of the medium. If it's widely known by the general public I think the general consensus is that it doesn't fit the -narrow- definition.

It would fall under a -broad- definition, one that is overly broad for a trope (I think Roger Ebert once complained that calling Star Wars "cult classic" rendered a perfectly good english phrase useless. In any case he or one of his cohorts wrote an article parsing the meaning of the phrase "cult classic" once, I wish I could find it).

I don't think just because something is a horror movie automatically makes it a cult classic. Wes Craven's movies are fairly popular, so much so that they're considered the quintessential horror movies.

How is Cult Classic a Subjective Trope??? Whether a work is good or bad in your eyes is subjective, sure, but how many people in general consider a work to be good or bad, and whether it has a loyal following years after its release - in other words, the criteria - those are objective!

berr

09:47:09 PM Oct 6th 2011edited by berr

That's what I said! I think whoever insisted on it was hung up on the word "classic", but that is really just a common turn of phrase. A couple film critics have written diatribes complaining about how "cult classic" is a perfectly objective phenomenon (at least in some genres) that had been misinterpreted due to people assuming a literal meaning. I know that if most people saw a perfectly awful film such as The Room listed as a Cult Classic the reference would still make sense.

I am tempted to make this an index. If anyone objects, they can reverse it, but please reply and say why, if this issue has been discussed before. (The reason I ask is because it seems like a glaring omission not to have been done deliberately, since the page is formatted as an index.)

I'm un-indexifying it because it's very silly for an index to be YMMV. "YMMV whether this page should be indexed here," no, that doesn't really work, does it?

You can tell it's not formatted as an index, btw, cuz it's sorted by medium. That's a trope thing, not an index thing.

berr

09:30:20 PM Oct 6th 2011edited by berr

I've been gone from TVT for six months (I'm a perfectionist and it got too stressful active-editing pages) but I extensively cleaned up the page when I indexified it. I can see this issue both ways (whether or not it's an index). I don't really consider Cult Classic YMMV... If something isn't widely considered cult (by critics), it probably isn't. :-) I think people who classified it as YMMV got hung up on the word "classic" but that's really just an idiomatic phrase, not an objective description of quality. Similar example would be when BFM (a genre) was renamed "Epic Movie" by Madrugada, but not in a YMMV sense. Anyway I've been out of touch, so I'll have to look up what the latest consensus is. One of the things I found stressful is that I think YMMV tropes should be put in a separate dropdown on the main page, not segregated in a different namespace... :-)

I made some edits to the definition of a "Cult Classic" because it repeated a common fallacy - that a Cult movie was something which bombed on its original release. This common mistake was actually one of the first things Mark Kermode (UK film critic) felt the need to put-right in his first appearance on a late-night BBC Radio 1 show in the mid-90s where he reviewed various cult movies. To make his point, he cited Reservoir Dogs (then a recent film) and Star Wars as examples of Cult films.

SomeGuy

07:10:43 PM Apr 3rd 2010

That doesn't make any sense. A cult film is supposed to be the source of adulation of a subculture. Star Wars is about as mainstream as it gets.

berr

02:24:24 PM Jan 8th 2011edited by berr

I'd agree that it doesn't have to bomb on initial release. But it should have a small but devoted following of some sort, so Star Wars doesn't count.

GoForthAndDie

12:00:27 PM Feb 8th 2011

I would say a "cult classic" has to create its own "cult", if you will. Star Wars/Star Trek conventions prove their fans are whacko enough to dress up and expose themselves to massive ridicule; they should qualify, if not being the Definers. And why does everyone insist that a "cult" following must be small? There are quite a few Catholics in the world, and organized religion is the textbook example of "cult".

In short, "cult" is not based on the size of the following, but rather said following's fervor.

Hekateras

06:26:17 AM Mar 8th 2011

This troper would describe cult films as part of "the geek's Bible" or "must-see" in whatever genre or direction they occupy. As in, a fan o AI stories can be expected to have watched Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner to get that badge, or Firefly and Cowboy Bebop in the "gritty space sci-fi" genre.

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